The smoky eye lie

At the gym this week, as usual we were watching What Not Wear. It was standard fare until they got to Carmindy, the so lovely, sweet and dreamy make up guru.

The makeover-ee asked Carmindy to show her how to do a smoky eye. Carmindy arched a perfect eyebrow and responded, "Oh, that's what you want to learn?"
Carmindy was probably thinking of how much more helpful basic mineral makeup techniques would be. But the woman was incredibly excited and answered, "Yes! I've wanted to know how to do one forever!"

At this point, we called shenanigans. Some producer totally coached that woman, because How To Do a Smoky Eye has been a cover story on at least two fashion magazines every month since...oh, 2002.

And if you're a visual learner, there are 30 -- that's THIRTY -- YouTube videos with step by step instructions, including this one in Arabic. We don't know what the make up artist is saying, but she does an amazing job with a peacock blue shadow that is such a hot shade right now.

Seriously, if you still don't know how, but really want to do a smoky eye, pick up a black, or grey, or brown eye liner and start smudging. That's how we learned when we were 11 and rummaging through our moms' makeup bag.